Contemporary Dielectric Materials, Chapter 8

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Effect of the sintering temperature on the microstructure and optical properties of ZnO ceramics

B.Subha, R. Saravanan, N.Srinivasan

ZnO (alfa aesar, 99.9%) powder was sintered in a conventional furnace at different temperatures (200ºC, 800ºC and 1000ºC). The structural study was done by powder X-ray diffraction and it was found that there were no other phases present in the material. The crystallite size of the sintered ZnO powder was found to increase with increasing sintering temperature. The effect of sintering on grain growth was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). SEM reveals that the average grain size increases with increasing sintering temperature. The optical band-gap Eg of sintered ZnO has been determined from UV-Vis absorption spectra of these samples and the band gap was found to decrease with increase in sintering temperatures. In the present work, the effect of sintering temperature and hold time on the microstructure and optical properties of ZnO ceramics has been carried out.

Keywords
Zinc oxide, Sintering, Optical Energy Gap, Rietveld Analysis, Maximum Entropy Method.

Published online 1/1/2017, 10 pages

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21741/9781945291135-8

Part of Contemporary Dielectric Materials

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